Fresh and Wild jumps on the “convenience food” bandwagon

As we reported a few months ago, the trend in food shopping is toward streamlined shops that offer prepared food for busy urbanites. Longo’sis doing it, Loblaws is doing it, Mark McEwan is doing it, and now Fresh and Wildis doing it. Construction is underway at the Distillery District location as Jason Rosso, ex-chef at Sassafrazand Rosewater Supper Club and currently the director of operations of the Distillery Restaurant Group, is giving the grocery store a makeover to make it more accessible to the neighbourhood, as well as to hungry travellers. “Our primary focus is on prepared foods, like roast chickens and oven-fresh pizzas. We also started a salad bar where you can pick and choose from 30 items.”

Aside from prepared foods, Rosso is also stocking the shelves with more recognizable brands and is in negotiations with Sweet Escapes to carry its baked treats. He also says he’d love to include Somachocolates in the store. To help become a “community store,” Rosso is even lowering the prices: “It was quite expensive before. Now you can get a full dinner, like chicken, mashed potatoes and veggies, for about $5.99.”

As for the infrastructure, the pantry-like metal shelves are staying put, but the café is being expanded with a lounge area. Rosso is also applying for a liquor licence for the patio and plans to start a summer music program for the weekends. The store is currently open, but he says it’ll be two weeks before everything’s finished.

2 thoughts on “Fresh and Wild jumps on the “convenience food” bandwagon”

The Distillery Fresh & Wild is a Fresh & Wild in name only; the original store went bankrupt and was wisely purchased by the Distillery so that will continue to operate.

When it opened, the Fresh & Wild was a train wreck. Its prices were those of Pusateris, but aside from luxe pasta and olive oil, its goods were decidedly pedestrian–meat of unknown provinence, generic produce from the other side of the world, no organics, banal and average prepared foods. I don’t know how anyone thought expensive mediocrity would be a viable business plan.

Then again, expensive mediocrity seems to work for the Distillery restaurants, so maybe the new prepared goods will do well. The salad bar as it looks now certainly doesn’t inspire optimism.

Better keep those prices down or the curious crowds will soon dissapear. The most successful food places I know of (the ones with line ups) have good food cheap. The deserted places have good foood at higher prices. Figure it out!